Friday, August 12, 2011

New Blog: Feet to Follow, Eyes to See

Many of the blogs related to Israel and biblical sites are focused on matters of academic or current interest. The purpose of David Lang’s new blog is to help the reader to connect facts to faith. Lang is the author of the Bible Lands PhotoGuide for Accordance Bible Software and he is currently writing a book, Feet to Follow, Eyes to See. He writes:

Ultimately, that’s my goal in writing this book. There are plenty of excellent books which offer facts about biblical backgrounds, but I want to bridge the gap between fact and faith. I don’t just want you to understand the Bible more clearly; I want you to hear God speaking to you through His Word.

His series “Dotwatch” helps readers to “connect the dots” for readers who live in a different time and place than biblical writers. In his most recent post in this series, he reflects on the difference between what his intense study of the land of Israel prepared him for and the reality he experienced on his first trip.

Even though my in depth study of all those photos gave me a good sense of what to expect, there was one thing those photos could not adequately give me: a proper sense of scale. There’s a difference between seeing a photo of the colonnaded street of Beth-Shan and actually standing at the foot of one of those massive columns. Even if the photo actually shows people standing next to those columns, so that your mind is able to conceive the difference in height, it is somehow not the same thing as actually being there. Getting a sense of scale from a photograph is a clinical kind of knowledge. It cannot convey the experiential knowledge of actually being dwarfed by something and feeling awe at its grandeur. Somehow, this second kind of knowledge is deeper and far more real. I suppose you could say it’s the difference between seeing in three dimensions rather than two.

I appreciate Lang’s insights and personal style. I look forward to following along with him on his journey.